Wednesday, April 01, 2015

RANDOM THOUGHTS #225

Steve Cole ponders 10 more ways
that World War II might have turned out very differently. (See Random
Thoughts #213 for the first 10 and #217 for the second 10.)

1. The US might never have developed
a nuclear bomb. Maybe they (like the Germans) decided it was
impossible? Maybe they were still trying to get it to work and ran out
of time? Anyway, an invasion of Japan (given the lessons of Okinawa)
would have been a very expensive undertaking with at least a million
dead American soldiers and sailors. And that invasion only envisioned
capturing 1/3 of Kyushu and the area around Tokyo, assuming that this
alone would force the Japanese to surrender. Given the Japanese
mindset, that is just not all that certain. The US might have found
that the invasion of Kyushu was so expensive (in lives) that no
invasion of Tokyo followed. They might have captured Tokyo at such a
terrible price that there would have been no will to spend another
million lives capturing the rest of the country.

2. There were so many attempts
to assassinate Hitler that any of them could have had a major impact,
but all of them would have been resolved in two ways. Himmler would
have taken power in a bloody internal battle and fought to the end
like Hitler did. Alternatively, relatively sane generals might have
taken power and tried to negotiate a peace. The German fantasy of
peace with the US and Britain so they could keep fighting Russia
wasn't likely to happen, nor was it likely that the Russians would
have agreed to any result that left Germany intact. FDR had already
declared the goal was "unconditional surrender" which to the
Germans meant that Germany would cease to exist as a nation.

3. Stalin might not have
purged his military during 1937-39 and had a competent officer corps
to keep his Army from falling apart during the first weeks of the
German invasion.

4. FDR might
have been less friendly to Russia. Justly criticized for being soft on
communism, FDR had the idea that if we treated Joe Stalin nicely and
shipped him as much aid as we could that he would stop murdering his
own people and give up plans to occupy half of Europe. (This policy
has never worked toward any of the communist dictatorships.) FDR might
have held back on aid and let the Germans and Russians kill as many of
each other as possible, then agreed to British plans to invade the
Balkans and keep the Russians out of Eastern Europe. FDR could have
put conditions on aid to Russia (such as allowing freedom of religion
or promising an independent Poland) but refused to do so.

5. Stalin might have believed everyone who kept
telling him that Hitler would attack in 1941. Stalin was so anxious to
avoid (or at least delay) a war with Germany that he forbade any
preparation for it out of fear it would provoke one.

6. Stalin might have left the
pre-1939 border defenses (pillboxes, bunkers, and other defensive
lines) intact, rather than ordering them blown up or dismantled. This
would have provided a stronger second defense line against Operation
Barbarossa.

7. The British could have been more aggressive.
While Montgomery is often criticized for his lack of aggression, it
was actually not his fault. British government policy was to hold down
British casualties (by taking more time to assemble supplies and
bombard the Germans with artillery) and British units simply never
displayed the kind of aggressive tactics that the Germans, Russians,
and Americans used (with the sole exception of O'Conner's
brilliant African operation). The failure of the British Army and
Montgomery to take Caen on D-Day, to close the Argentan-Falaise gap,
to close the German escape routes from the Scheldt Estuary, and to
rescue the paratroops at Arnhem are all examples of a lack of
aggression that ended up costing more casualties than they saved.
Montgomery's crossing of the Rhine in 1945 was grossly overproduced;
the Americans had already crossed the Rhine on the run at several
locations.

8. Stalin might have not been such a paranoid maniac and not
murdered most of his own generals in 1937-1939, giving his army
competent leadership during the first six months of the German
invasion.

9. Hitler might have gambled by
concentrating his offensive during the initial invasion of Russia in
the northern half of the front, leaving the southern half to follow
along as it could. Without the diversion of Guderian's tanks to the
south to trap a huge number of Russian troops, the Germans might have
reached and taken Moscow and Leningrad before the Russian troops in
the south could have been redeployed.

10. Hitler might have stripped other
theaters to concentrate more firepower for the initial invasion of
Russia. He just didn't have enough troops. Faced with a choice (July
1941) of grabbing Moscow or encircling the southern half of the
Russian Army, he simply lacked "one more field army" that
could have allowed him to do both. When he made the final push for
Moscow (September 1941) he had to strip units from the Leningrad front
(leaving that city uncaptured) when one extra field army would have
done the trick. There were plenty of divisions doing more or less
nothing on occupation duty in France and other countries.

About Me

Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc. is a game-publishing company that creates and publishes games based on the Original Series of Star Trek. We have a contract with Paramount Pictures to do so. Posts and blogs that are not directly related to gaming are the opinions of the individuals who write them, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.